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My Big Fat Anelletti Noodle Attempt

Remember the post of me talking excitedly about that funky dingy shaped pasta from Trader Joe’s that we can’t get up here in Canada? And remember how sure I was that I could use one of my pasta making plates (top righthand corner in picture below) to form my own dingy noodles at home?

Well, I was sorta right. But mostly wrong.

I feel like I’m on the right track here, but where I went wrong this attempt was thinking I could swing the wire string arm across the dough plate to cut up the rings with the same thickness at the right moment I needed, when I needed to, consistently.

I contend that would be akin to trying to nail Jell-O to a wall. {forehead smack}

So… Yeah, I couldn’t keep up. It was crazy trying to keep one eye on those noodles to cut them off at exactly the right time while keeping another eye on how much dough was left in the hopper at all times. I underestimated myself. :-\ And to give you perspective, I only had the KitchenAid mixer running on the second speed. Can you imagine what would happen if I ran the mixer on the middle speed like I do when I roll out and cut spaghetti or linguini noodles with the other pasta attachements?

Um… {giggling}

Anyway, have a look at what I did manage to make.

Yeah, yeah. I know. They look just like Cherrios. I’ve heard several people ask me why I made cereal when I promised pasta. Yuck it up, people!

As you can see, it was hard to get a uniform thickness to each noodle, and the plate I chose has side ridges to its shape, so that further complicated the thin, smooth dingy shape I was after.

After it all air dried over a 24-hour period, I was ready to cook it up. (I was already making another dinner the night I made these, so it was never going to be cooked fresh.) When I did need to use these in a dinner, I picked a fast and dirty sauce/noodle/cheese pasta bake in the interest of feeding us fast and testing how the noodles cooked up. I wasn’t concerned with serving us a high-end after a long day of baking cookies for my mother-in-law. We were starving!! 🙂

It was fast cook, too. I cooked these to just before the dente stage in about 3 to 3 1/2 minutes. (I’m so mean to my pasta noodles!) I then forced the pasta to swim in a pot of hot tomato-mushroom sauce. After a few good stirs, I let it rest for a minute while I prepared the oven pan and grated the cheese.

I baked this dish covered for about 20 minutes at 350 until it was piping hot before pulling off the foil and topping it with pizza mozzarella before shoving it back under the broiler to cook for another five minutes. When it came out of the oven, the cheese topping was the perfect white with browning colour I love so much.

{kissing fingers to the sky}

I will keep trying to perfect making the noodle shape I’m after, or tweak it till I find a noodle size and shape I like more. In the meantime, I will probably try out a bunch of recipes ideas I found until we decide which ones we like best. The bake I made was fairly good, and the husband appreciated the Spaghetti-O feel and taste, but I am aiming higher for my food repertoire than food we used to eat out of a can as kids.

By the way, while I was researching how to best to cook up the Anelletti noodle, I found many other recipe ideas on Pinterest. Have a look at my Anelletti board.

PS: I know this is a crap picture, but I had to hurry to take this picture since the husband ate so much of it in such short order. As you can tell, the dish is already dirty from the first helping. Bless his nostalgic heart.